Source: Telegraph After going postal over a pretzel in Waitrose, one writer realised she had to find a new way to handle living with her anger towards her ex-boyfriend. Harsh words, long sulks or full-on tantrums – we all express our anger differently. Of course, the adult approach to dealing with something that irks us is to sit down and “talk things through” with the person doing the irking. But how many of us possess such maturity? If you’re anything like me, the minute something doesn’t go your way you’re inclined to throw yourself on the floor and kick and scream like a child denied her favourite toy. The last time I did that was when they ran out of my favourite pretzels in Waitrose. The poor security man thought I was having an epileptic fit. Of course, I wouldn’t ordinarily overreact to such a trivial nuisance this way. But my temper had been tested in recent weeks. The cause? My ex-boyfriend Adam – the once darling of my life who’d dumped me unceremoniously earlier this year. In truth, I’d seen the break-up coming. Our laughter-filled conversations on the sofa had dissolved into one-word exchanges in the hallway. We’d grown apart. But still, when he came home and announced that he wanted to end our eight-year relationship in February, it was a huge blow. The second wallop came when he told me he’d continue to live with me in our two-bedroom Victorian conversion flat until it sold. “What, you mean we’re going to be … flatmates?” I asked disbelievingly. “Yes,” he smiled. “Why not?” It was absurd. None of...

It’s been six months since I went on Mike Fisher’s British Association of Anger Management (BAAM) course. Six months since I sat in a room with six strangers and revealed proudly to the world, I get angry and I’m here to do something about it. I remember it well. Mike Fisher has been running weekend workshops for over 17 years and has averaged out to have helped a 1000 people deal with their anger, for every year doing it. I love Will Storr’s description of anger, which he wrote for the Observer newspaper having been on Mike’s weekend course in 2007. “I can feel my rage. It collects in the centre of my throat. It’s like I’ve swallowed a cannonball and it makes me want to scream. I am brimful of anger, and when it sloshes out, it does so in the only direction it’s allowed to – at inanimate objects. I shout at keys I can’t find, at carrots I drop on the kitchen floor, at doors I stub my toe on. Last week I called a spilled glass of elderflower cordial a cunt.” There are six ways we express our anger; intimidation, interrogation, poor me, distancing, winding up and blunder bussing. I’m a bit of everything when I get angry. I’m a big man who looks scary in an aggressive, ‘I can kill you’ stance. I’m good at machine-gun spraying questions, while being a victim the next moment. I often walk away from situations having dropped an anger grenade in the room, leaving its victims to clear up the emotional mess. When I’m angry at seeing my...

Christmas is coming and the most stressful time of the year is drawing near. So much to do. The tree is top priority, followed closely by presents, food, drink and good-cheer in equal measure. Christmas is the most stressful time of the year. More than half of us have family disagreements and a quarter of us say our relationships with our partners come under immense pressure. We have never been under so much pressure to deliver a perfect Christmas. We’re lured into thinking Christmas is perfect by the glossy TV Christmas adverts, with celebrities smiling as they huddle around the Christmas tree exchanging gifts, beautifully wrapped. Everyone must be happy and cheerful through the season of goodwill. No one is allowed to be sad or depressed. NO ONE MUST GET ANGRY! Here’s what to do and not to do over Xmas. Prepare, prepare, prepare! Its the only way you’ll give yourself the time to relax and enjoy the day. Don’t give yourself a hard time making everything perfect. Stop and look at the bigger picture, its just one day! Think about the incidents, which press your buttons in all the wrong ways. Our buttons are unique to all of us and what makes one person angry is completely different to the next. Figure out a strategy of how you are going to deal with those circumstances, whether it’s a brother-in-law, mother-in-law or wife. Think about the Bigger Picture! Christmas is the one day that getting angry isn’t worth the long term consequences. You are never as good as your last...

Mike Fisher is Europe’s leading expert on stress and anger management. As the founder of the British Association of Anger Management (BAAM), and having helped over 16,000 people over a 16 year period, he knows a lot about how low self esteem leads to stress, and how stress leads to anger. Promoting BAAM’s latest products of mediation, stress audits, conflict free resolutions, face-to-face Skype work and group stress programmes, Mike tells us how low self esteem has a direct correlation to stress. He says that the idea of how stress affects low self esteem is actually pandemic in our culture, citing evidence that nearly all BAAM clients have the underlining issue of low self esteem. When a person is suffering from low self esteem, there are five contributing factors. Priority. If you don’t prioritise yourself, you will find you take on projects, activities or say yes to certain commitments because you aren’t considering how taking on somebody else’s prioritises, affects your own emotional wellbeing and health. If you don’t make yourself a priority in your own life, you will in effect be ignoring your own stress signs, ignoring what you are capable of doing and not capable of doing and ignoring your own limitations. Pressure. Through the years of helping people, Mike is aware of how many individuals put themselves under copious amounts of pressure to perform, which eventually exhausts them and they become ill. Mike has recognised the correlation between stress and anger. He says that stress fuels anger and gives us this simple formula to better understand it: Reduced Stress + Reduced Anger = Increased...

As society in general gets more and more angry with the world around them, it’s inevitable that their children will follow suit. Its commonly acknowledged that children are products of their upbringing and if anyone is to blame for their children’s behaviour, more often than not, you can point the finger at their parents. But is it really fair? Aren’t we all in the same boat, doing what we can to survive this ride we call life? Haven’t the parents got enough to deal with, as much as their children? Too many questions maybe, but questions worth asking. What makes young people angry? And can we as parents help them find peace with the world and peace with their inner emotions and feelings? In my book the answer will always be, yes we can! What makes young people angry? It’s the same for children and adults alike, but just in a different context. Jealously, rejection, anxiety, pressure and stress are felt by children as much as their parents. Children express their anger and stress in exactly the same way too. Adults and children alike shout, throw tantrums, smash things, throw things, hit things and hurt things. The things are also the same across the age spectrum, be it their toys, themselves or their loved ones. It can be argued that children get a worse deal than adults because children’s worries are dismissed without hesitation. We’ve all heard of the ‘Children must be seen and not heard’ rule of a more stricter age, and children are shouted down as a matter of routine. Stop it, shut up, don’t be so...

Thousands of young men and women have gone to university this week. Some for the first time, some for the second and some for the last time. They’ve left home to spend their most formative years learning the skills to venture forth into the big wide world and get themselves a job on the strength of their academic results. Thousands of young men and women grinning with nerves as they wave their parents goodbye and turn their backs on their childhood. Nervous smiles as they ponder what to expect; making new friends and fitting in, managing their own finances, controlling their own time and deciding what to cook. Many will prosper and have the time of their lives. Many will make friendships which will last a life-time and many will excel at their chosen subjects and go onto get their perfect jobs and enjoy a career of wealth, happiness and fulfilment. Many will fall at the first hurdle and many will succumb to the stresses and strains of university life and drop out. Many students go for the wrong reasons, be it to impress their parents or to get their parents off their backs. Many go simply because they have nothing else better to do and many go because the prospect of getting a job and working for a living fills them with dread. Whatever reason, the truth of the matter is stark; university throws up many hidden threats which can push the stress levels of any young person to their limits. But not all Stress is Harmful. It’s with this in mind that you should remember...